Why We Use Squarespace + How It Stacks Up to Other Platforms
So, you’re ready to level up your business with a professionally designed website. You’ve looked into a few designers and agencies and probably heard of different platforms like WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, and more.
But how do you know that the platform they recommend is the right one for your business? Will your new website do all the things you need it to do? Will it be easy for you to make simple edits in the future, or will you be relying on a developer to update your site? Can you get support quickly if something goes wrong?
Here at Hoffbeck + Co, our sweet spot is working with small business owners. We’re always looking for ways to make things easier for our clients so they can focus on serving their customers, growing their business, and doing what they're best at.
When it comes to websites, we know our clients don’t need an overcomplicated website. It needs to look good, have compelling copywriting, be straightforward and simple for users to navigate, be easy to edit, be mobile-friendly, and it needs to work!
After working with a variety of other platforms, Squarespace quickly rose to the top of the list, and we decided to focus solely on using this platform. We love it, and our clients do, too!
Here are all the reasons why we chose Squarespace and why we recommend it to our clients. Plus, see our list of how it stacks up against other popular platforms.
Why Squarespace is a Great Choice for Small Businesses
1. It’s an all-in-one platform.
We understand that as a business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate, so wherever there are opportunities to simplify, you’re likely “all in”. You probably use an online platform for just about everything: accounting, time tracking, payroll, project management, and so much more. If you have a chance to keep things under one roof you’re “all ears,” as they say.
There are no third-party plugins or add-ons with Squarespace.
Many platforms require the use of third-party “plugins” to get your website to do what you need it to do. Not only can this get confusing and overcomplicated, it can also pose a security risk to your website (more on that later).
Squarespace is an all-in-one platform, meaning it has all the tools to do almost anything you need baked in.
Want to sell products on your website?
• Squarespace has a robust suite of e-commerce tools and solutions.
Want to have a calendar for clients to schedule appointments with you?
• There’s a built-in scheduling and appointment booking feature.
Want to sell a course or hide content behind a login for members only? Squarespace can do that, too.
It also has a built-in email platform to send marketing emails to your email list.
2. It’s user-friendly and intuitive.
Just like your business, your website is always evolving. You should be able to easily make additions and updates when things change. Whether you do it yourself or send a quick email to your developer (like us), quick copy edits or minor updates should be just that – QUICK (without breaking the bank).
Compared to other website platforms, Squarespace is built to be intuitive and user-friendly to everyone, from the experienced web designer to the DIY-er.
While it takes time and a bit of advanced coding to build a custom Squarespace website from scratch (like the websites we build), our clients don't feel overwhelmed and confused when we hand them their website after it goes live.
Our clients who feel comfortable making small changes love the freedom to do so. (And if you’d rather never touch the backend of your website, that’s fine, too. We’re here to help with any ongoing edits or site maintenance.)
3. It’s secure.
SSL Certificates
Unlike many website platforms or hosting companies, all Squarespace websites come with a built-in SSL certificate (the thing that makes your website https:// instead of http:// - the s means it’s a secure website). This is a huge plus because many browsers will mark websites without SSL certificates as a security risk to users. Google also loves when you have an SSL certificate – your website will rank higher in the search results than websites without one!
Closed Source vs. Open Source Platforms
Many other platforms (like WordPress) are known as "open source" platforms. This means that their code is open to the public to modify, which allows programmers and developers to create plugins and widgets that could breach the security of your website.
Squarespace is "closed source" which means that only the expert programmers at Squarespace HQ can access the code to the platform. They're constantly patching holes and security issues to keep your website on lockdown.
3. It’s low maintenance.
Other website platforms require you to manually update your code, themes, and plugins often and on an ongoing basis. If you don't keep everything up-to-date all the time, your site could break or look wonky, and you never really know when this will happen.
As a business owner, you have too much on your plate to make sure your website is updated constantly! With Squarespace, you never have to worry about your site breaking if you don’t stay on top of site updates – you know that it’s going to just work.
If you’re using custom code or scripts on your website, though, you should still check in periodically to make sure everything looks good and nothing looks off – but we’ll take that any day of the week over our site completely breaking.
If you want that extra peace of mind, we offer an ongoing website maintenance package at an affordable monthly rate - find details about that here! It includes a monthly inspection of your site, testing for errors, email support, and up to one hour of hands-on design work monthly.
5. It’s budget-friendly.
You can (and should) have a beautiful website on a powerful platform at a reasonable price. Squarespace's plans are priced to be affordable for businesses of all sizes. Most of our clients only need the Business plan which (as of writing this blog) is just $23/mo (if paying annually). If you hire us to build your website, we can also get you 20% off your first payment (you choose if you pay monthly or annually) with our agency’s Squarespace Circle member discount.
We’ll do an in-depth price comparison below to show you how Squarespace’s pricing stacks up to some of the others.
6. It has solid SEO features.
Squarespace offers several built-in features that make it simple to stay on top of your SEO. It’s easy to adjust page titles, add SEO descriptions, change URLs, create URL redirects, and more.
While you may need an SEO expert (we can help) if you want to add more technical SEO tactics to your website and marketing efforts, having these user-friendly SEO features right at your fingertips makes it possible for non-experts to stay on top of essential SEO steps.
You can read more about Squarespace's built-in SEO features here.
We include foundational SEO setup in all of our website packages to set your website up for success in the search engines. Read our 6 steps to an SEO-friendly website on our blog here.
7. It offers 24/7 customer support.
Many small businesses don't have a go-to developer on staff, waiting to solve website issues as they arise.
Squarespace offers 24/7 customer support by live chat or email. Their technicians can easily hop into the backend of your site to identify issues or walk you through how to make edits – and it’s 100% free!
They also have a huge library of tutorials on just about everything you need to know about the Squarespace platform. There’s an in-depth article on every feature or element of the platform – how it works and how to use it.
And if we build your site for you, you can always reach out to us. We won’t be “on” 24/7, but we can solve most issues within 24-48 hours, Monday-Friday. So if you’re ever in a pinch, first hit us up – but it’s awesome for you to know you can also connect directly with Squarespace if needed.
8. It offers beautiful designs and free templates.
Let’s talk about design and aesthetics for a minute. From the moment we land on a website, we can tell if it’s a Squarespace site or something else (Wix, WordPress, etc.).
Squarespace websites are clear, professional, and crisp. They offer an extensive library of stunning templates that the DIY-er can use as a starting point, plus many customization opportunities for those who want something more unique.
It’s a drag-and-drop platform, making it easy to design a beautiful website with no code – although we do use custom code on our custom websites to make your website bespoke to your business! This means that you can select an element and drop it where you want it to be on the page.
Unlike other drag-and-drop platforms, Squarespace limits exactly where you can drop elements (which may sound like a limitation), but it’s set up that way so that your website remains clean, aligned, and professional-looking. Too much freedom can be a bad thing (especially for DIY users) and can result in a messy, Frankenstein-looking website.
How Squarespace Stacks up to Other Platforms
We’ve talked about all the benefits of Squarespace, but how does it really compare to competitors?
First, we want to stress that Squarespace is not a one-size-fits-all for all types of businesses. We work with a lot of service-based small businesses, and because of that, we find Squarespace to be a perfect fit for them; however, we’re not going to say that Squarespace is the BEST platform out there for all businesses.
For example, if you’re a product-based business that handles a large volume of products and orders, we might recommend Shopify to you. If you need your website to perform many intricate and complex functions, WordPress may be the platform for you. If your primary offering is an online course, Kajabi may be the best fit.
Just know that while we think Squarespace is the bee’s knees for the clients we typically serve, we would never recommend it to you if we felt like another platform would be a better fit for your business.
With that, let’s dig into some comparisons so that you can make an informed decision for your business. 👇
Squarespace vs. WordPress
In our experience, Squarespace and WordPress are the two most-used platforms among agencies and designers.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is the OG open-source website platform. It’s estimated that over 37% of all websites are running on WordPress, including some big names like BBC, The Walt Disney Company, Katy Perry, AMC, and more.
The Cost
WordPress itself is completely free to use. However, to actually get your website live on the Internet, you’ll need to pay for a hosting service. This can be as cheap as $3 a month, but if you want a good web host (fast, secure, with decent customer support), that’ll run you around $25 a month. Plus, some plugins (like WP Rocket for site speed or Woocommerce if you want to sell anything on your website) cost money to stay active on your website.
Squarespace offers plans for as little as $16 a month.
The Benefits
Flexibility. Because of its extensive plugin library and opportunities for modifying its code, WordPress offers the most flexibility for what your website can do. It offers an extensive plugin library which allows you to add many intricate features and unique elements to your website. The sky's the limit if you have the creativity and the funds to hire a developer! Squarespace is more limited in terms of what it can do, but we find that this is completely a non-issue for most small businesses.
Speed. If you take the time to properly optimize your WordPress website and pay for a high-quality hosting provider, it can run faster than the average Squarespace website. Squarespace sites run pretty fast out of the box, and there are steps you can take to make your site a bit faster. This is mostly a concern if you have a very complex website with a lot going on with features and functionality – which most small businesses don’t have or need.
Control. You have more control over your website and the content on it on WordPress. If you ever wanted to move away from the platform, you can easily export all of your content, including blog posts and images. With Squarespace, you’d have a harder time moving to a different platform if you chose to in the future, essentially it would be more manual. But if you’re starting on a new platform, you’re likely looking to revamp your website altogether anyways, perhaps with the exception of your blog content.
The Drawbacks
Security. As we mentioned above, WordPress is an open source platform, meaning anyone from your neighbor to the experienced web developer can edit the platform. WordPress is more open and vulnerable to spammers and hackers, so if you build on WordPress, you need to make sure to have adequate security plugins and firewalls in place. Even then, the plugins you have installed on your WordPress site can pose security risks, and the more you have, the more at-risk you are – especially if you don’t keep them updated. If your website is hacked, you’ll need to pay a developer to help you.
Squarespace is a closed source platform that has built-in security features that are pretty foolproof. Without the need for third-party plugins, you’re able to keep your site closed off from security threats. If your website somehow does get hacked (which is extremely unlikely), an expert from the customer support team will be ready to help you.
Maintenance. WordPress requires regular maintenance to keep your site looking good and performing well. You’ll need to make sure you are running on the latest version of PHP (the coding language WordPress is built with), the latest version of WordPress itself, the most recent iteration of your theme, and the latest versions of all your plugins. If you fail to do so, you risk your site breaking, being vulnerable to hackers, or something looking funky.
With Squarespace, you don’t have to do anything to keep your website running smoothly. If your site uses custom code, you might want to pop in every now and then to make sure everything looks normal, but you never have to worry about your site breaking or being hacked if you don’t stay on top of things.
Complexity & User-friendliness. WordPress has a steeper learning curve when it comes to building your site and making design changes. No two websites are built the exact same on the backend — where one WordPress site is built with a drag-and-drop builder plugin, another is completely custom-coded (meaning you have to go into the source code to make any updates!).
Even for the technically-challenged, Squarespace is made to be easy to use. It’s easy to find your way around the interface and find what you’re looking for.
Squarespace vs. Wix
When it comes to DIY-ing your website, Squarespace and Wix are two of the most popular platforms. They’re both drag-and-drop builders and made for business owners who desire simplicity and user-friendliness.
What is Wix?
Just like Squarespace, Wix is a drag-and-drop website builder that allows complete design freedom.
The Cost
Wix’s pricing is fairly similar to what you’ll see with Squarespace. Their most basic plan starts at $16 a month. If you need e-commerce capabilities or other special features, you’ll need to pay more.
Squarespace’s basic plan also starts at $16 a month.
The Benefits
Design capabilities. Wix offers a library of templates to choose from and swap in your content. With Wix, you can choose an element (like a text box or image) and drop it anywhere on the page. This is a plus for DIY-ers looking for complete flexibility when it comes to design.
All-in-one platform. Like Squarespace, Wix is an all-in-one platform, meaning it comes packaged with everything small business owners might need to get started (read: e-commerce functionality, member areas, scheduling, photo galleries, and more).
Support. Both Wix and Squarespace offer 24/7 customer support in case there are any issues with your website (or if you simply need help figuring something out!).
Security. Wix is a closed source platform, making it secure and not susceptible to hackers or security breaches.
The Drawbacks
Clunky editor. We’ve built websites on Wix before, and the building interface is…clunky, to say the least. It can be slow and laggy, and it’s hard to find certain tools and settings you’re looking for. It’s simply not as user-friendly as Squarespace. Something that takes 5 minutes to edit on Squarespace could take 3x as long on Wix.
Speed. Wix site speeds are below average for the web, clocking in at an average of 4 to 7 seconds to load.
Squarespace vs. Shopify
Unless you are looking to sell a lot of products on your website, Shopify won’t be the platform for you. If you want to set up an online store and are wondering which platform to go with, read on, friend!
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a robust online platform and website builder designed for online stores. The sole purpose of Shopify is to sell products online. It’s priority is for online store features and functionality, with website design as a secondary focus.
The Cost
Shopify’s most basic plan is $29/month with a 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fee from each sale. Squarespace’s e-commerce plans are $23/month with a 3% transaction fee OR $27 a month with a 0% transaction fee.
The Benefits
Powerful e-commerce capabilities. Because Shopify was made solely for product-based businesses, e-commerce is their bread and butter. Their e-commerce capabilities are robust and unmatched, and they can handle stores with lots of products and high order volumes.
Squarespace has great e-commerce capabilities, though - you can set up hundreds of products with hundreds of different variations (like sizes and colors). It’s also extremely user-friendly, and even allows you to sell digital products and subscription-based products (a feature that was only available on Shopify until recently!).
Shopify has all the e-commerce features Squarespace has, plus many more. For example, Shopify offers a wholesale option for businesses who sell their products to other businesses in large quantities. Businesses buying products wholesale will have their own login to be able to purchase your products at wholesale prices.
Shopify also makes it easy to dropship and gives you more options for shipping.
Ease of use. Shopify offers a library of paid and free themes. You can choose a theme, input your logo, colors, images, and copy, and you have a website. They also make it pretty easy to add your products and set up shipping and business information.
Third-party apps. Want to do something special with your online store? Shopify has an extensive App Store with apps you can use to accomplish just about anything with your online store (i.e. integrating your website with Facebook to sync your products, dropshipping, email marketing options, and much more).
The Drawbacks
Limited design capabilities. With Shopify, you really only have the ability to control the design of your homepage – to a degree and depending on which theme you choose. You won’t have much control of the design of other pages on your website. Shopify is built using its own unique coding language called Liquid. This means that if you want full control of the design of your website, you’ll need to hire an experienced Liquid developer.
With Squarespace, you have complete control over the design of every single page on your website.
It can be overwhelming for DIY users. Although the platform is made to be fairly easy to use, it comes with a steep learning curve. It has so many features that it can be overwhelming for beginners.
Basically, if you have a small business with a smaller volume of products, and you want more design control, Squarespace is your best bet. It’s simple, affordable, and offers all the basic features you’d need to run a successful online store.
But if you are a larger business handling a large volume of orders, selling wholesale, or dropshipping, Shopify is the way to go.
Squarespace vs. Showit
While the Showit website platform has been around since 2008, it really started making waves in the design world around 2018 due to its unique building capabilities. Basically, you can drag and drop elements anywhere on your website – no restrictions.
What is Showit?
Showit is a drag-and-drop website platform, similar to Squarespace and Wix. It used to be marketed exclusively to photographers, but now, you’ll find businesses from all kinds of different industries on Showit.
The Cost
Showit starts at $19 a month for the most basic plan; however, if you want to have a blog on your website, you’ll need to upgrade to the next tier which will run you $24 a month.
Squarespace’s most basic plan is $16 per month, including a blog.
The Benefits
Completely custom website builder. As we mentioned above, Showit’s biggest selling point is its extremely flexible page builder. You can drag and drop anything anywhere on your website. This attracts a lot of website designers who crave complete design freedom with no code necessary.
It’s important to note that this used to be a huge advantage for Showit over Squarespace. Before the summer of 2022, Squarespace used a block-style page builder that restricted where you were able to place elements on the page. In July of 2022, Squarespace launched its new Fluid Engine builder, which totally changed the game and introduced more flexibility and design freedom to the platform. You’re still somewhat limited by a grid system, but it’s more there to help you align elements and support quality design instead of restricting your design freedom.
Robust SEO features. Showit integrates with Wordpress for the blog portion of the website, so you’ll get all the SEO capabilities and features Wordpress offers (like the Yoast SEO plugin, for example).
Extensive branding capabilities. On Squarespace, you can add one heading font, one body font, and five brand colors (unless you use some custom CSS code). On Showit, you have more freedom for how you use your fonts and colors. For example, you can use one font for your headings, another for your subheadings, another for your body copy…you can even add in a fun script font to use here and there as an accent. You can also have eight colors in your site’s color palette (three more than Squarespace allows). However, Squarespace still provides many opportunities to add more custom colors to your website (beyond the five allotted colors in your palette) in the Fluid Engine editor – they just aren’t saved to your palette.
The Drawbacks
Too much design freedom. Remember when we were talking about Frankenstein websites above? Because Showit allows so much design freedom, it can be easy for things to look misaligned or completely wonky. Squarespace’s grid feature helps protect against this to keep your website looking crisp, polished, and aligned.
It’s not an all-inclusive platform. On Showit, if you want to sell products, send marketing emails, set up appointment scheduling, create marketing popups, install anti-spam software, look at your website analytics, and much more, you’ll need third-party plugins – which are totally fine, until one of them breaks or isn’t compatible with another one you have installed on your site. Squarespace keeps everything under one roof so that you never have to worry about plugins breaking.
No built-in blog platform. As mentioned above, Showit uses Wordpress to host all blogs. So, all your blogs and blog settings live in Wordpress, and they basically get pulled into your Showit site. It works, but it’s certainly not as convenient as Squarespace’s built-in blogging tools.
Squarespace vs. Kajabi
If you sell digital products like online courses, coaching, exclusive communities, or memberships, you’ll want to pay attention to this section. If you don’t think you ever will in the future, Kajabi won’t be the best platform for you.
What is Kajabi?
Squarespace, Wix, and Showit are website builders FIRST, but they also offer features for selling digital products. With Kajabi, it’s the opposite. Digital products are Kajabi’s bread and butter, and they happen to offer a website builder to make it all look pretty. Kajabi caters specifically to business owners selling things like courses, memberships, podcasts, and coaching.
The Cost
Kajabi’s basic plan starts at $119/month when you pay annually. This includes your website, e-commerce capabilities for up to 3 digital products with a 0% transaction fee, unlimited marketing emails and landing pages, and more. It’s difficult to compare the cost apples-to-apples with Squarespace, but to match Kajabi’s features the closest, you’d be looking at Squarespace’s $27/month Business Plan + a $29/month courses and memberships add-on fee for a total of $56/month.
The Benefits
It’s created specifically for entrepreneurs who sell digital products. If this is you, Kajabi’s course creation, funnel setup, and marketing tools are worth considering.
Superior course creation features. Again, Kajabi focuses on entrepreneurs who sell online courses. While Squarespace recently launched its own fairly robust course creation platform, Kajabi has features Squarespace doesn’t (yet): like student progress monitoring, student engagement tools, the ability to drip out content as students move through the course, quiz creation, and more.
It’s an all-in-one platform. Like Squarespace, you don’t need to use any third-party plugins – everything you need is under one roof.
Great email marketing features. Kajabi’s email marketing features are very robust. You can set up automations, segment your audience into lists, and leverage pre-built sales funnels. Squarespace has its own email marketing platform with all the basic tools a business owner might need, but Kajabi wins in this category.
(Note: While Squarespace has its own native email platform, it also integrates seamlessly with Mailchimp, a more advanced and feature-rich email platform. This is what we typically recommend to our clients and what we use for our Weekly Dose of Disruption emails – get on our list here!)
The Drawbacks
Limited design capabilities. Kajabi isn’t really a website design platform. Yes, you can build a website on it, but your design tools are more limited than on Squarespace. And if you want to add any custom code, you’ll need Kajabi’s Pro Plan, which costs a steep $319/month if you pay annually.
You can’t sell physical products on Kajabi. With Squarespace, you can sell almost anything – physical products for delivery or local pickup, digital products like PDFs, courses, memberships, appointments, in-person classes, Zoom calls, and more.
The price. Kajabi is a powerful platform, but it comes with a steep price tag. If you’re selling a simple course or membership and you don’t really need all the robust features Kajabi offers, Squarespace might be a better choice for you.
Squarespace vs. Weebly
What is Weebly?
Weebly is another closed-source, drag-and-drop website builder like Squarespace, Wix, and Showit. It offers many of the same features, like e-commerce,
The Cost
Weebly is the cheapest platform we’re comparing today—it even offers a free option. Its most basic paid plan is $10/month if you pay annually, which is $6 cheaper than Squarespace’s basic plan.
The Benefits
You can get started for FREE. Even if you have $0 to put toward your website, you can build and launch a website on Weebly. The free plan is fairly generous when it comes to features – you can even sell physical products on the free plan. But you cannot connect a custom domain to your site on the free plan, which is important if you want to look legit. For example, your website URL would be something like: hoffbeckandco.weebly.com
Ability to export your website and move to another platform. If your site is on Squarespace and you want to move to a new platform, you’ll need to rebuild it from scratch. With Weebly, you can easily export your entire website and import it to your platform of choice. It’s unlikely to transfer over perfectly, but it’ll likely give you a solid starting point. But in an ideal world, you’re doing all the research on the front end (like reading this blog 😁) to prevent needing to transfer platforms at a later date!
The Drawbacks
Outdated templates. Squarespace stays at the forefront of beautiful design and modern templates. Weebly’s templates are okay, but they just don’t keep up with current design trends. Plus, Weebly’s template library offers around 50 templates—which pales in comparison to Squarespace’s 300+ templates.
Lacking in advanced features and tools. Weebly has e-commerce features, an email marketing suite, and members-only areas, but in terms of advanced features, Squarespace easily takes the cake. With Squarespace, you can create courses, sell subscriptions, create videos, schedule appointments…and much, much more.
Subpar blogging features. If a blog is part of your marketing strategy—currently or you plan for it to be in the future—you might want to consider another platform. Weebly has a built-in blog editing tool, but the general consensus is that it’s not very user-friendly. Plus, it’s missing several key features like customizable social sharing images and AMP (accelerated mobile pages) capabilities.
You need to search for and install apps and extensions for basic features. Weebly offers an extensive library of apps and extensions you can add to your website to help you boost traffic to your website, add lead capture forms, edit SEO settings, add your Instagram feed to your website, and many more. However, you need to take the extra step of installing these apps if you want to take advantage of the features, whereas the majority of these features are already built into the Squarespace platform – no further action is required. For example, if you want animation on your website, you have to search for and install an extension for that. If you want to pull your live Instagram feed into your website, you’ll need an app for that, too. Many of these apps aren’t free, either, so the overall cost of your website can quickly creep up.
The Bottom Line
If you own a product-based business and advanced e-commerce features are more important to you than design, Shopify might be the platform for you.
If your primary business offering is an extensive online course, you need powerful course creation and management tools, and you have a large budget to put toward your website, Kajabi might be your best bet. (But be sure to do your own demo trials and comparisons with Squarespace’s course creation and marketing tools before you make a decision…it could save you money every month).
If you are just getting started and truly don’t have money to pay for a website at all, Weebly’s free plan could be a good starting point for you. Yet, if you have even $16 a month to invest in your website (and trust us, it’s worth it to show up professionally online), you’ll be better off starting with Squarespace–saving yourself time, hassles, and money in the long run.
Unless one of the specific scenarios above applies to you, Squarespace is an ideal fit for the vast majority of business owners who come to us for website help. It’s easy to use, fast, secure, and beautiful.
It’s no secret that we ❤️ Squarespace…
…and so do our clients!
Your website is the face of your brand. It’s important, so be intentional about the platform you choose.
If you’re interested in a custom, functional, and gorgeous Squarespace website, Schedule a Call with us. We offer packages for all types of small businesses and budgets, and we make it easy for you to build your own package so you get exactly what you need—nothing more, nothing less.
More soon,
Mara
WEB DESIGNER + SEO SPECIALIST
P.S.
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